Fine needle aspiration in salivary gland tumors: specificity and sensitivity

Neoplasms of salivary glands represent almost 3% of all head and neck tumors. Proper surgical treatment depends upon accurate histological findings, especially in the case of malignant lesions. As such, knowledge of correct cytological findings prior to surgery is important for therapeutic planning. This is not easily established since it is usually based only on the patients' clinical history and imaging exams

Objective: To evaluate results obtained from fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB), comparing them to the histological findings of the respective surgical specimens and analyzing the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of this method in relation to the diagnosis of malignancy or benignancy.

Methods: Retrospective study with the medical records of 73 patients who had salivary gland neoplasms and were submitted to FNAB and surgical treatment.

Results: Data disclosed that values of sensitivity were 87.9 % and specificity 85.7 % for diagnosis of benign tumors. For malignant tumors 42.5 % of sensitivity and 98.3 of specificity, were observed. Overall values of accuracy were, respectively, 85.7 % and 87.8 % for positive and negative predictive values in the diagnosis of malignancy by FNAB.

Conclusions: It was shown that FNAB, as supplementary diagnostic method, can be useful for preoperative evaluation and surgical planning especially for malignant neoplasms.